


Their Busy Language

by mautadite



Category: Control (Video Game)
Genre: Coda, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:34:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21836029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mautadite/pseuds/mautadite
Summary: Quis custodiet what now?Jesse thinks, wry.(The Director’s work is never done, but she still needs a place to lay her head.)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 100
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Their Busy Language

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



> _Birds may sing their busy language._ Rumi. Divan 1919.
> 
> Happy Yuletide, dear recip! <3

Langston thinks she’s nuts, and says as much. 

“And by nuts, I mean like,” he backpedals, flicking his eyes skyward for ideas as Jesse smiles wryly, “‘predisposed to taking action that I and many others would deem highly inadvisable but you’re the director so screw it, pave the way.’ That’s what I mean.”

“Sure.”

“It’s just… I definitely get why you’re doing it, I get it more than anyone else would. I mean, it’s me!” Langston gestures to his own often harassed, currently sceptical face, and even though she’s only been a part of the Bureau for a few scant weeks, she does feel like she knows him. Even Polaris gives a pleasant pulse of affirmation. “But it’s the Panopticon. Me having eyes on everything doesn’t mean I can always stop it in time or get the rituals rolling when things go south for the winter, spring and summer.”

“Covered this, didn’t we?” Jesse says, rolling her shoulders back. “I don’t expect you to stop it, because I will. It’s what I’m here for, Langston.”

“All right, all right.” He puts his hands up, two pale white flags. “Token protest: made. You know I’ll never stop you from making my job easier.”

Jesse grins, steps back, leaves him to his monitors. Her hand is already reaching for the Service Weapon, feeling it shift and respond beneath her palm, as she delves further into Containment once more.

*

There are other places she could sleep. Lockdown’s still in effect, but the Oldest House is riddled with places to lay one’s head, if one knows where to look and doesn’t have particularly stringent standards. Jesse, frequenter of abandoned subway tunnels, vermin speckled motels and dark alleys, can’t be easily accused of the latter, and finding a place to lay her head at her new place of employment isn’t exactly hard. There’s Central Executive of course, where most of the employees ( _her_ employees? By now, Jesse has more than embraced her role as Director, but there’s still some way to go before accepting that everyone here works for her) bed down. The Oldest House had been more home to Trench than his actual apartment, and there’s room enough in the Director’s office. There are offices in Research that are quiet and Hiss-free now, surrounded by the plants that she’ll still murmur to for old times’ sake, and she’s pretty sure Ahti will always let her crash on his couch.

But somehow, it feels right to lay down at night in the Panopticon.

Almost all of the Altered Items are accounted for now, with just a couple more Objects of Power left to track down. Jesse feels close to these things like quicksand is to mud; alike in ways that are easy to miss until you get really close. Cleansing them of the Hiss has put her mark on them, and thus Polaris’ mark, and she can’t help but view everything that Polaris touches as the purest, best sort of ash; burnt away and purified in a trial by blue, resonant fire. Being close to them gives the assurance of being best placed to stop them again if need be, of being able to protect them from corruption: the lantern, the surfboard, even the fucking flamingo. An eye for an eye, in the watching sense.

 _Quis custodiet what now?_ Jesse thinks, wry.

Most times, Jesse beds down in a cot near the Control Point in the midst of everything, and gets whatever sleep she can. But sometimes, she drags her cot up to the ruin of the P6 cell, sits amidst broken glass and battered stone and scattered files and fuzzy recordings that never hurt any less to listen to. Dylan has smashed his mark into the Oldest House as surely as a building shift.

Being here… it’s a way to feel close to him, too.

*

Most mornings, (or… whenever she wakes up; time hasn’t really started being a thing for her again) once there isn’t a crisis actively happening in front of her, Jesse warps over to Central Executive first thing, where she can always count on Emily to greet her with a cup of coffee, a wide smile and her latest test results. This morning (or mid-afternoon, or evening, or twilight) is no different.

Polaris likes Emily, as much as she can be said to like anything or anyone. Jesse thinks it has something to do with Emily’s intensity, her hunger for knowledge and understanding, the never-ceasing whirr of her mind. Life to Emily is a formula in motion, and Jesse thinks she wouldn’t know what to do with herself if she ever got a definitive end to her equations. That need to search, to seek always, is part of what Jesse thinks makes Polaris so warm and steady on mornings like these, when they’re chatting with Emily.

 _And here I just like her ‘cause I think she’s kinda weird_ , Jesse muses with a smile.

“Let me know when you’re available for another round of scans,” Emily says as they drain their cups and Jesse stands to go. “I want another look at your blood.”

“Uh huh. You know, between me and you, my blood really enjoys these morning coffees with you. I think you guys could strike up a real friendship.”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” Emily replies, blissfully unabashed, and reaches out to rub Jesse’s elbow. Jesse doesn’t hate it, Polaris doesn’t hate it, and combined with the coffee and the talk, it’s as good of a way to start off her morning as anything.

Before she sets off, she stops by Arish for a quick update. Nothing new: Marshall’s still missing, there’s a small resurgence of the Mould beneath Central Research, and the cafeteria workers that they rescued from an out-of-the-way bunker yesterday are all going to make it.

“Oh, and some of my security guys and a few of the rangers are getting together to unwind and play some board games tomorrow night. If the Oldest House doesn’t start raining tentacle monsters or somethin’ between now and then, you should come.”

“Board games?” Jesse doesn’t know if she can name more than two. In Ordinary, life had been a series of attempts to get _out_ of the house, her little brother’s hand glued to her own. Down forgotten paths in the park, through the darkening woods, all over the dump; they had spent their little lives outside. “I don’t know that I’m any good at board games.”

Arish’s smile now has a shit-eating slant. “Oh, well then you should _definitely_ come, Director.”

She laughs, waving him off and stepping towards the Control Point. “ _Jesse_.”

She gets to one knee, preparing to teleport, a small smile ghosting over her mouth. Living as she did never left much room for friendships, and as the Director, she can’t say that’ll change now. No one actually wants to be friends with the boss. But it’s nice to look around the Bureau, this place that she changed for the better, and know that she has people she can talk to; people who’ll be there.

*

The Director’s work is never done.

After checking in briefly with Underhill (who is up to something truly gross with what looks like a cross between a mushroom and a five pound slug) Jesse throws herself into dealing with the Mould. 

Uncountable employees had been infected while the Hiss tried to take over, and while Jesse had nipped the source in the bud, so to speak, there was no telling how many of them had wormed their way into the bowels of the Oldest House, sweating and shambling and moaning through their disease, trying to propagate, and re-emerging according to whatever internal clockwork kept them going. This isn’t the first time they’ve seen more mould hosts, and it probably won’t be the last. 

Jesse slams down onto the ground amidst a group of them; her knee crushes something soft and pulpy with telekinetic force, and the rest of the beings scatter like pins. One of the bigger ones is throwing crap at her from an elevated position. Jesse reaches out an arm in a move that’s become as natural to her as it is natural for a river to run its course. She grabs a gas tank, launches it towards the host, then lets the Service Weapon twist and melt and contort in her hands, and when she aims it, there’s a precise piercing shot that hits the tank dead on, and the organism and everything around it explodes into a distorted rainbow of dust.

When the clean up’s done, she teleports over to Maintenance to clear out a batch of Hiss that showed up late last night and run a couple errands for Ahti. Then it’s Panopticon, sweet Panopticon, to pick up the trail of AI59-AE, a rocking horse that sings catchy ballads from the eighties. Langston’s already warned her that they’re unsure of what it does, other than give serious earworms, so she lets Polaris guide her gently, follows all the cues and signs that have become loving second nature to her ever since the first time Polaris reached out her hand. 

They eventually find it squirreled away near the P7 cell. After killing the Hiss who’ve surged up around it, and shrugging off the wild urge to jump on it and yell ‘giddy up!’, Jesse cradles the head in her hands. Polaris thrums, resonating upward and outwards, and together, they cleanse the Altered Item, burn away the Hiss until they’re nothing but a red stain of memory across the horse’s gently rocking frame.

Afterwards, Jesse totters over to a wall, allows herself to sag against it for a few seconds. Polaris wants to know if she’s tired. No, that’s wrong. Polaris _knows_ that she’s tired; she just wants Jesse to admit it to herself.

“Yeah. Still got work to do, though,” she says out loud. She runs a hand through her bangs, pulls her hair out of its ponytail, and ties it back up. “I’m glad I’ve got you here with me, though.”

As ever, Polaris flickers in her mind; the constant light behind her eyes.

*

Most nights, she’ll stop by Executive to round out her days. First she visits Emily, to collect whatever readings or reports or progress updates she has, if any. And then she ambles round to the room where her little brother is being kept.

It’s still weird, seeing him stretched out and motionless like this. In all those years of searching, in her mind’s eye, he had always stood tall, the biggest thing in her purview because she wanted it that way. When he was Hiss-corrupted he stood off the ground, spine arched and power weeping from him in sinister waves. Even as kids, even as he trailed along consistently in her wake, her little brother always seemed bright and tall and full of motion; always wanting to _do_ things and _see_ things. This awful stillness makes a stranger of him. Between the Bureau and the Hiss, he’s been used up, sapped dry, a being of stunted growth.

Jesse pulls up a chair, opens the glass cell, and sits next to him.

 _It could be worse_ , she reminds herself. _If not for you, it could be so much worse._

His hand, the one nearest to her, is stretched out alongside his body, curling into a loose fist. It’s easy to reach out and place her own hand within it, in a shadow of their old routine; Jesse leading, Dylan following. Touching him is frightfully alien; she has more years of knowing what it’s like being apart from him than she has years knowing him, and the anger that that fact generates still feels like it could swallow her whole sometimes. 

But it’s also ordinary. Skin on skin, her warm palm against his. The mantle of the Directorship spans between them, but holding her brother’s hand is like going home.

“Well, Dylan,” Jesse says, sinking deeper into her chair, smiling at his drawn face under the dim lights.

Most nights, the Panopticon is where Jesse sleeps. But sometimes, here – not in Containment, not in the Director’s Office, not in Research or the Motel – sometimes here, next to her baby brother, Jesse will close her eyes, touch his hand, and get some rest.


End file.
